The Book Of THoTH

I have always found this subject fasniating. Why do we believe in anything, not just god? But why do some people believe so strongly that they can manifest their believe either onto others, or idols?

It is perhaps a bit more scientific for this forum, lol.. but I couldn't think of any other place to share it with you..

So if there is a better home please move it for me.. Otherwise enjoy!

http://www.npr.org/news/specials/2009/brain/

Love it. Lines like that are one reason I always check out your posts.

Fits just fine in M&O, even if it does carry the standard mechanist "brain=mind" assumption. It's a common perspective on the mystical.



Tiger

I was able to read a bit before things went south here at home. Sometimes the night is spent taking care of sick folks.

It looks interesting, so I will be sure to get back to it.

dolphin

Very interesting indeed, but I'm being selfish, it's interesting because I've been reading about these subjects recently. I've looked into temporal lobe epilepsy, and schizophrenia to see what people report they feel before an attack of TLE. There's a whole area of study to compare the mystical experience with the neurology behind it.

In some cases, the brain can be artificially stimulated to give the owner a sensation of the "divine" or in some cases "contact with alien intelligences". Some in science therefore claim that these people are somewhat deluded. Others don't think it's that simple. I can recommend "Daemon" by Anthony Peake as a good read on this subject.

What interests me the most is the near death experience, especially the sensation of time slowing down, or even stopping. People are able to see a "life review" which appears to them to last for hours (in some cases its reported they live their entire lives again as an observer) , but takes only seconds in terms of those outside of the NDE.

Interesting enough right, BUT so many people report that they relive these experiences in totality, remembering every tiny detail, which suggests that we remember everything that happens to us, but not consciously. That's pretty staggering if it is true, I've certainly had experiences of my own, which suggest that it is true.

I better shut up before I rattle on again, but in terms of belief, you might want to check out an article I wrote on the front page.

A Suspension of Disbelief

Thanks White Tiger, I always appreciate your one or two lines of complete reason.



Thoth, what if when people are dying the brain sends out a huge amount of some chemical, and it affects/attacks the area of our brain which is responsible for pre-cognitive thoughts. If it damages this part, couldn't that be a reason for feeling like you are an observer?

When this chemical overload is taking place, perhaps the brian is making more synaptic connections which allows them to have better recollection?

What if indeed! I don't think there is a part of the brain for pre-cognitive thoughts though. Well at least none that has been found or even studied. What is interesting is that precognition is one of the side effects of temporal lobe epilepsy, and in schizophrenia. Also when certain parts of the brain are directly stimulated, they can produce this sensation of precognition, although the parts aren't directly responsible for it. Unfortunately, science being science, it has collectively ignored precognition. If it doesn't fit, ignore it, or explain it as an illusion etc. We could be missing out on a big part of the answer if we looked into such things.

One possibility is that we live our lives over and over (I'll write more about that in an article). In that case precognition becomes a "memory" of an event in a previous existence. This is similar to reincarnation, but a different body isn't rehabited, it's the same one. It would also explain deja vu, because you have been there before etc. If you think of the movie groundhog day, where he repeated the same day over and over, but doing things slightly differently and apply that to an entire life. There's a lot of theories in the scientific world for a repeated time scenario. There's also some religions that say we live the same life over and over, until we "learn" enough to move on to the next stage as it were. Could they hold some clues?

What about people like me, who don't remember much of anything past two years ago.. not from amnesia, but just in general.. I have a very difficult time remembering things that have happened, good or bad. And what I do remember, half of it is wrong..

I rarely experience deja vu, and I have very few dreams.

Well... perhaps 'god' is different things to different people, and yet despite their differences at least some of the individual beliefs and experiences are based in reality - just different realities. Perhaps some people do repeat the same life many times; perhaps some precognitive experiences are truly precognitive while others are more a function of the brain (seizures and whatnot); perhaps some NDEs involve hallucinations while others include a review of the individual's entire life, and yet still others' experiences of NDE involve entirely different functions...

These suppositions seem to support the notion that not everyone exists in the same reality or follows the same path, even though we - as humans - have a lot in common, too. What we experience beyond our humanity, however, might come from/exist in very different dimensions of reality. The universe is a really big place... infinite... large enough to hold all possibilities. It doesn't make sense to me that we all must experience reality (especially beyond the shared physical reality of our human lives) the same way, as though All That Is contains only a one-size-fits-all truth.
plur

the pineal gland produces dmt.!

Sorry for the delay in responding,

what is DMT?

(I cut some parts of your quote out in order to make more space)

Its funny you talk about stimulation that gives a person a sensation of the "divine". I am schizophrenic and at one point in my journey, I was made to feel like I was Jesus. The way I found out that I was not Jesus was when I was trying to make a cross with my arms and the demonic voices started wispering and laughed at me. At the time I was experience a surge of "energy" throughout my body which led me to believe I was special. Its hard to describe it but its something I had never felt before.
Even now that I am on meds, I get that "divine" feeling only its not out of control. It happens when I hear a profound statement that rings true to me. I don't know what to make of this "leftover gift" but I know its not out of control like the time of my hallucinations.
I think whatever created us meant for us not to see certain things like radio waves for instance or "demons". Doctors cannot prove what these hallucinations mean but there is enough data to say that people have been seeing strange sights throughout history.
Thoth, your post really hit me because I never heard that "divine" feeling mentioned that way. I probably was deluded at the time when I thought I was Jesus... but now that im stable what is this same feeling doing here and only emerging when i hear something important?

When the body is deprived of its senses, the soul takes over, its that simple, its not complicated at all. When the soul lacks the ability to access the faculties of human sense, it recedes to its source. The only thing that makes it "complicated" is science insistence that there is no such thing as a soul.

The whole term "Jesus" refers more to united human consciousness than a single human being (even though he certainly was). During experiences where humans receive adamic knowledge, they often visualize themselves as Jesus, because this is the easiest way for someone to digest what they are feeling. This is not delusion, it is an inner intuition that is a very powerful tool when used correctly.

I think this dimension is meshed with another one. One for the body, and one for the mind. A lot of this could come from the interaction between the two.